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Monday, 11 May 2015

Distribution changes

We're making some changes to how Keycloak is distributed. Some changes already arrived in 1.2.0, while others will come in 1.3.0. In this post I'll explain what changes we're making and why we're doing it.

Standalone will be the default download of the Keycloak server and will be the recommended option for production and also for non-JavaEE developers. While the appliance was built on the full WildFly application server, the new standalone download will be based on WildFly Core. This will provide a much smaller download and also reduce the footprint of the server.

For JavaEE developers we'll also provide an option to install Keycloak server into an existing WildFly application server. This download is not recommended for production. It will only be possible to install a release off Keycloak server onto one specific WildFly version.

These changes doesn't not affect adapters. Adapters will still be available for JBoss AS7, several versions of WildFly, EAP, Tomcat, Jetty and more.

There are a few reasons why we're going away from the WAR option:

Compatibility - We can focus on providing features instead of spending time trying to get things to work on multiple containers.

Testing - Again, we can focus on testing features rather than testing multiple containers.

WildFly features - We believe WildFly is the best container and it provides a lot of features other containers don't (for example modules, JBoss CLI, patching).

Integration - By only integrating with one container we can provide a single way of doing things. Some features are not feasible to add to multiple containers, for example authenticating clients with SSL certificates.